Is it bad that I like her best when she sleeps, that I love her more when she's just an unspeaking, pretty face?
She naps next to me in our double bed with a smile on her face, her dreams a welcome escape from the stress of life. In her dreams she doesn't have the worry of providing for her children, our children.
We live in the Capitol, and things have gotten bad again, reminding me of an unmentionable time, a time when the Districts were rebelling against Snow and the citizens had to pay. The economy is crumbling and there are food shortages- not just in the Districts, like once was the case, but everywhere in Panem. Even I, Gale Hawthorn, who had grown up in District 12, forced to catch illegally the little food to provide for my family, was feeling hunger pangs in the dead of the night.
She breathes in, and breathes out. Just this little action in itself is beautiful. I admire the slight curve of her perfectly formed lips, reach out to caress the soft skin of her now drawn cheeks. Her dark eyebrows arch gracefully over her eyes and her hair tumbles down around her in a disarray, framing her perfect face.
I remember the day we met. I was stood in the doorway of my Capitol home, thinking about the past, as I frequently did, when I saw her coming toward me. I stopped breathing. My eyes stared, perhaps rudely, but I did not care. I had to see better. I couldn't believe what I saw before my eyes. How could she be here? In the Capitol? She'd been banished to District 12. And even if they'd let her out, why would she return here? To me? She had Peeta now, everything she'd ever wanted. And yet. I couldn't help myself from hoping, hoping that maybe, just maybe, things hadn't worked out between them after all, that she'd realised it was me she wanted, me she needed... Because despite everything, despite myself, I still needed her.
Katniss Everdeen.
Emotions battled with eachother in my mind as she steadily approached me from across the street- Anger; she had made her choice. She'd had her chance with me and all she'd done was hurt me. I let her in, she let me down. I knew I should hate her. Wonder; why was she here? Did she want me? Did I want her? What would I say? And finally, most dominantly, lust. The questions didn't matter. Not now. I knew I should hate her, knew I should turn away before she could hurt me again, but I couldn't. Because no matter what, I would always be unconditionally in love with her.
My mind was a mess. My emotions and thoughts tumbled around, bashing together, fighting to be heard. My eyes never left her as she advanced toward me across the street, and yet they weren't really focused. I was stuck in the past, memories overtaking me- our first kiss, our hunting trips and last words...
Before I knew it, she was there, right in front of me, after all those years of lonely Capitol life, so close I could touch her if I wanted, smell her, taste her on my lips once again after all this time, if I could just reach out to her...
"Hi, it's Gale, right? I'm Rosetta, I was just wondering..."
A choking noise erupted from my throat, cutting her off. Rosetta? No, I must have misheard, this was Katniss, Katniss Everdeen. The girl on fire, the Mocking jay, my hunting partner, the love of my life...Then I looked closer. Her eyes were green, perhaps natural, perhaps contacts, but either way they didn't belong to Katniss. And the shape of them, too big to be Katniss'...No this wasn't Katniss at all.
Distress. Sadness. Disappointment. Anger. I was furious at myself for hoping. Furious at myself for caring: why should it matter whether or not it was Katniss that stood before me? I'd promised myself long ago that I never wanted to see her again. And yet it did matter. My heart sunk as I realised the woman before me, whilst she did possess alarming resemblance to Katniss, was not her. Never would be her.
"I'm sorry, did I say something?" Rosetta mumbled to me after several moments of silence, her eyes alight with concern that she'd done something wrong to put me into this frantic, dazed, unresponsive state. "I was just wondering if you had a paintbrush I could borrow, I'm decorating at the moment and I can't seem to find mine..." Rosetta begun to mumble.
Her voice, smooth like velvet but with an underlying strength that bespoke confidence, resilience and a fighting nature, reminded me too of Katniss. I remember thinking 'Today really isn't my day', as punch after punch planted itself in my gut, winding me, taking away my breath and with it my will to live. This young woman was so similar to Katniss it pained me to look at her- her hair, her face, the way she moved, her voice...but it could never be her. I felt as if somebody up there, a God that I'd never really believed in, was taunting me, rubbing salt into already sore wounds. Because this is what Rosetta was doing to me. Tearing upon cuts that had sealed, leaving deep scars that were ready to burst open when even slightly provoked. I'd been strict with myself, banishing her name from my mind, until Rosetta came along, and now it all came back to me...
"I'm sorry," I eventually had managed. "Uh, I might have a paintbrush you can have, come in".
That evening, Rosetta had asked me over for dinner, as a thanks for the paintbrush I'd lent her. As I'd sat there, in her house, eating her food, I'd found myself watching her. It was unreal how completely she resembled Katniss. I stared at the way she ate, the way she smiled when I said something funny to her, the way she flicked her hair over her shoulder- not in a girly way like all the others, but as if to toss it out of the way. Everything about this stranger reminded me of her. Until she spoke. When she spoke, the things she said were not Katniss. She spoke of television shows she'd watched, cheesy realities that Katniss would never have entertained. And sometimes when I'd get carried away and start reminiscing an anecdote about a time that I was out shooting, I'd look at her and catch a strange look in her eye, as if she couldn't comprehend my lifestyle...she could never understand me in the way Katniss had.
A year later, I married her. I liked her, I cared for her and she did truly make me happy, in a simple kind of way. Before Rosetta, it had been a long time since I'd smiled, but with her I felt free, like her innocence and easiness rubbed off on me. Two months after our wedding day, Rosetta had our first child, Luna, then, 11 months after that she gave birth to Belle. I was fulfilled in this life. But it was not complete, never could be.
And so, as I lie here now, in bed with my wife, I cannot help but be sad with how everything turned out. She deserves better than a man who loves her face. I do love her too, but she is not the love of my life. Katniss is. And there is absolutely no denying the fact that if Rosetta had walked up to me that day outside my house, with a different face, blonde hair, a different body frame, then I would not be with her now. I am with her because she looks like Katniss. I am with her because she's the closest thing I can ever get to the one woman I will ever want.
Rosetta is still sleeping, and my heart skips a beat at her beauty. I reach out slowly, taking her face in mine and kiss her lips gently, kiss them until she stirs and they begin to respond against my own, becoming more and more urgent. We break apart, breathless.
"What was that for?" she asked, a smile in her voice.
Silent tears began to fall down my face, as her words break through my facade, the fictional world I've built up around myself. When she sleeps, she can be Katniss, but when she's awake, when she speaks those words that my Mockingjay would never say, she is no longer her. And I prefer the pretend.
Rosetta will never be her. I will never have Katniss.
It's a truth that pains me, that makes me guilty to the core of my being, but a truth all the same; I love her more when she's sleeping.